[OpenBIOS] Dictionary size limit per device instance

[David L. Paktor]

Asif Haswarey wrote:
>> With that arrangement, the amount of dictionary space available to plug-in device drivers was virtually unlimited! 
>>     
>
> Weel, I ran into this problem while testing (QLogic iSCSI) FCode I had developed for the SPARC.
> I experimented with a dummy fcode consisting of only constant declarations.
> The FCode failed to get interpreted when the total tokenized size reached just a little
> above 50KB (that's kilo-bytes). Unfortunately I system OBP would not let me use the "here"
> word to find out the exact size of the dictionary space my dummy FCode used up. So I figured
> the dictionary space available for my FCode is basically a portion of the overall dictionary
> space available to the system. In short, every device FCode has a limit of dictionary
> space available to it.
>
> Is my understand correct? If so, then this is what my question is about concerning OpenBIOS.
>   

Well, it's not an inherent characteristic of Open Firmware, nor of OBP.  
It might depend on the
platform where you were running your test.  If it was one of the 
E{3..6}{0,5}00 servers, that
would be consistent.  Incidentally, what happened when you hit the limit?

As for seeing "here" from FCode:

defer my_here
 '  noop to my_here
" here" $find if  to my_here  then

( you might need a  "drop"  after  the "if"; I forgot whether  $find  
returns just the XT or
the "immediate" indicator, too...)

Then you can rock'n'roll with  my_here  to show you where you are...

-- 

David L. Paktor             dlpaktor at netscape.net